Head of School

The return of staff & students this semester has marked a transitional shift into a new phase of operating here at Wy’East Academy. Our Operational Blueprint has allowed us to continually operating throughout the global pandemic due to our adherence to policies around PPE’s, social distancing & quarantining guidelines. We have more staff & students on campus than ever before as we continue to raise the bar on expectations across all of our programs; our average GPA is higher than it has ever been before, students get more rest than they ever have before & students have already achieved a dozen podiums in competitions. Acceptance letters are arriving daily for our amazing seniors with juniors now beginning the college application process. With the recent news that our staff will be eligible to getting vaccinated beginning January 25th we are now excited to start building out plans for the upcoming Summer & Fall semesters while space will be limited due to the increased interest in the Academy. Registrations have now started to come in for both Summer & Fall, so please make sure to secure your spot for next year while space is still available. Thank you for your continued support with this amazing group of students!

-Mike Hanley

Academics

January is an exciting time of year. Usually, this month is full of powder, but this time it came with all seasons and fresh faces. We welcomed several new students this semester—at 57 students, we have our largest student body on Wy’East record. Teachers started out the semester by securing course enrollments and ensuring students are well prepared. Each student will master life skills and goal setting with an Advisory Course. The theme for 8th grade is Independent Living, Freshman are focused on Self Reflection, Sophomores are working on Preparation & Passions, Juniors are building their Philosophy, and Seniors are scouring their options for College & Careers. For the initial two weeks, academic hours were held in the cabins (unless students from the same cabin requested or earned extra assistance). We held daily zoom meetings and walked around campus to greet our students through the window or social distancing at the front door. We look forward to opening our classroom doors for more normality in February!

-Kayla, Robbie, and Jaime

Kayla Hokanson’s student of the month is Luka Kuharic for setting high personal goals, staying on track to achieve them, and consistently working ahead of pace.

Robbie Walters’ student of the month: Sierra Semsak. Sierra is adjusting quickly and is doing a great job of staying on top of her work.

Jaime Vincent’s student of the month is Bradley Morse for being a kind roommate, taking advantage of academic hours and consistently wearing his facemask!

Student Life

We would like to welcome all the new students and families to Wy’East Academy. Also welcome back returning students and families. The students have settled in and jumped straight into the new year with great spirits. We have been very lucky to have some sunshine for everyone to enjoy the dry slopes and skate park. As the students end their 2 week quarantine, we have some very exciting activities planned out for the semester. The last weekend of January we have the skate team going to cosmic tubing up at Ski Bowl, ski team going to Falls Creek falls, the girls cohort will be battling the Snowboard boys at paintball, and mountain bike going to Skamania Lodge for a day of ziplining. The residential staff are all very excited to get to know our students better as the semester continues. It's our hope that by setting expectations and establishing a healthy routine early in the semester that all students will succeed in academics and athletics.

-Phil Geyselears, Alissa Hetzel, Byron O'Leary Bay, Nick Garcia, Aaron Reynolds, Natalia Thorenson & Clayton Greenburg

Freeski

Greetings Freeski Families!

I hope everyone has enjoyed a happy and healthy holiday break with some time at home with their student athletes! We are excited to have everyone back on campus and to start semester two as strong and safely as possible

Timberline is up and operating at full swing with one of the best park set ups I have seen in my 5 winters at Hood!! There is a wide variety of features to train on giving our athletes the proper stepping stones to ski at the highest level. We hit the ground running week one with 3 double ski days utilizing some of beautiful weather we’ve had to start the semester.

We have also had a few early opportunities to compete in our local USASA events series. This has provided a great opportunity to get back into that competitive space, and prepare for larger events ahead! Our team had a number of athletes across a variety of age groups finding the podium. The mantra for this season remains “train harder than you compete” and the squad has been doing just that!

- Brian McCarthy, Kevin "Tweak" Merchant & Griffin Dunne

Mountain Bike

Dear Mountain Bike Families,

It’s been a great start to a great semester so far filled with a ton of new energy from both new students and staff. The bike program is here to stay and making noise around the industry all before our first race and it's just our first year. Thank you all for being a part of the program from the start, we are excited to continue to build it around you all. We are fortunate to be able to increase our coaching, digging, maintenance and shuttle access. We have ridden the cat, campus, Sandy Ridge, Ravens Ridge, Syncline, and been able to ski and snowboard at both Meadows and Timberline. Students have been working hard doing various drills, picking apart and working on different sections.

We are excited to go to Tennessee and Nevada as a team and get everyone racing and experiencing some awesome new trails and areas.

We are also in the process of ordering some team jerseys and pants and working on a team discount from Dakine to order bike travel cases, and other bike gear. As it continues to be cold we recommend getting cold weather riding gear in particular gloves, waterproof socks, rain jacket and base layers as well as a boot dryer.

More good news, we have a new Trampoline bike and the new airbag is on its way and hoping to get it up in the coming weeks.

-Wynn Berns & Tyler Villopoto

Skateboard

Greetings skate families,

I hope everyone had a great holiday break and got to spend some good quality time with their kids. It was very awesome to witness the skate crew roll back on campus with lots of energy and excitement!

Despite a couple injuries, the first 2 weeks of skateboarding has gotten off to a great start. The weather has been gorgeous and we’ve been taking full advantage of it. We’ve done several double days of athletics to soak up as much of this sunshine and to skate as much as possible. We’ve spent a lot of our time exploring the city and skateboarding schoolyards and street spots. It’s been really nice getting them off campus and if everyone can stay on pace with school we will continue to do these long days!

I’m very thrilled to be working with all these kids. This year has been really fun and I’m very excited to see what happens this next semester!

Jamie Weller & David Lobasyuk

Snowboard

Hey Families,

The winter semester is off to an incredible start for the snowboard crew! The energy both on hill and on campus is electric with progression happening in all aspects. We are excited to have everyone back from holiday break and to welcome some new student athletes to the squad who are coming in eager to get after it. The team has been utilizing time on the trampolines, in the skatepark, on the dry slopes, and of course up on the mountain where Timberline has created one of the best terrain parks in the country! The list of new tricks that the kids have learned in the short time since being back is outstanding. They are inspired to film clips on a daily basis producing content that hopefully all of you parents are able to watch and enjoy.

Along with the media content being pumped out, our crew was able to participate in the first USASA contests of the season for our region. On the female side, Isabella Gerry has been racking up the gold medals in both rail jam and slope style events followed by Hazel Predelski taking home a silver medal. For the boys, a huge congratulations goes to Aaron Gander for earning a silver medal in his first ever slope style contest! To follow him up, both Bradley Morse and Willie (William Parker Ryan) have earned some bronze medals along the way. We would love to see everyone on the team competing in these upcoming USASA events to share in the excitement and have the chance to take home some prizes!

January has certainly been good to all of us here at Wy’East. We are hoping for Mother Nature to bless with a few pow days in February but until the storms hit, we will gladly be soaking up the sun in one of the best parks around curtesy of Timberline’s park crew.

-Elijah Teter, Brandon Sorel & Luke Giacopelli